My goodness the cost of SD cards seems to be dropping fast. Why? I am not complaining but I see that what it cost me in 2018 for a 64GB card can purchase a 256GB card today. I am still satisfied with the resolution for stills and for video that I have my cameras set at, so I don't plan on upgrading my cards until they break. If you want a good SD card take advantage of it and buy.
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The price of SD cards
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Continued manufacturing of a Product in bulk paired with new advancements in technology keep costs down. We hope you enjoy your stay in the 18th Century.
Joking aside, I'm struggling to find 8 or 16gb CF cards now.
Joking aside, I'm struggling to find 8 or 16gb CF cards now.
I don't understand. Are you saying Voice Recorder? If you are the model I have will fit a 32GB card but thats the max according to the manual.
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Have you tried using a bigger card anyway? The 8-16GB size limit is maybe as was available at the time the recorder was made and it may work with bigger cards, OR, if it is because the recorder is 16 or 32bit then maybe it just cannot address a file system bigger than 16gb. In which case, the card could be formatted in the device and it will only create a 16GB file system. Yes that is leaving a lot of storage unused but if you are struggling to source them then that may be an option to try.
Why buy now? If the prices continue to plummet, dont buy now, wait and when you need them they will be even cheaper no?
Many of us are using other types of cards now either in replacement of or in addition to SD cards, depending upon our particular camera body. I've got all the SD cards I need for the bodies which still use them, and my focus is now on gradually purchasing larger-capacity CFExpress Type A cards as circumstances call for them in the future.
I won’t buy since I am content with my SD cards. But when they break I will buy.
Where did anyone say something is wrong with SD cards?
If a camera body doesn’t accept SD cards, then it makes no sense to buy them. The only thing “wrong” with them is they don’t go into the camera.
Not a thing wrong with them (as long as one buys a good, trusted brand from a trusted and reliable source, of course). As I mentioned in my earlier post, I don't need to buy any more SD cards because I have plenty for the three older camera bodies I own which use them.
My most recently-purchased camera, the Sony A1, uses a different kind of card, CFExpress Type A, and although it can also use SD cards, of course I prefer to take advantage of the camera's features and functionality, which really benefit most from CFExpress Type A cards. At the time I purchased the camera, I also bought one Sony Tough 80 GB CFExpress card, and then shortly afterward added a second; some time I later purchased a third in the larger 160 GB capacity. Actually, I've just ordered a second 160 GB card from B&H, as with Spring coming I will be outdoors shooting a lot and I know I'll appreciate having two 160 GB cards in the camera's dual card slots. For some reason, at the present time 160 GB is the largest capacity available in Sony's Tough CFExpress Type A cards.
Much depends upon the type of shooting one does when it comes to cards, speed and capacity. When I shoot macro or closeups here at home with my A7R IV, a 64 GB capacity SD card works just fine, as I don't really shoot all that many images at a time when doing that kind of photography. However, when I go out on the boardwalk or on a several-hour shooting excursion with the A1, I need more cards and higher capacity, as I never know exactly what shooting situations will arise, especially when wildlife is involved and I'm shooting in burst mode.
I have never had any memory card -- Compact Flash (CF) back in the old days, SD or now CFExpress -- break, and I've also been fortunate enough not to ever lose one, which can actually be more of a concern when out in the field doing extensive shooting on all-day excursions, when one is rapidly churning through cards to capture potentially elusive and unusual images.
Well, try it out and see what happens.....
Set your shutter speed, set your aperture, check your ISO, set the camera to "Continuous" and try it out on a moving subject and see what happens.....
Set your shutter speed, set your aperture, check your ISO, set the camera to "Continuous" and try it out on a moving subject and see what happens.....
I have tried it before. I am glad my camera has more features than I can imagine.
I'll be taking some shots this Saturday of a St. Patricks day parade and a chance for some good photography (non Phone).
I'm definitely on the anti-SD bandwagon even as I sit here packing for a trip where I'm planning on taking an SD-only camera.
I have broken SD cards in the past. It was mostly being lazy and leaving them in my computer(before I had MBPs where they hang a pretty good ways out) but still they were there. I find them way too small for my liking.
I'm down to only high end Sandisk cards, although I don't think my Nikons I have can use them at UHS-II speed. When I had my D500 still, I'd find it would sometimes choke even with a Sandisk Extreme Pro or whatever the highest end card they made at the time was, while I don't think I ever managed to fill the buffer shooting RAW when I would put an XQD card in it.
CF is obviously passé now, even though I'm still using older cameras from a time when XQD was on the market but was ludicrously expensive and CF still had a speed edge over SD.
To me, XQD/CFexpress represent sort of an ideal "sweet spot". They're still physically a lot smaller than CF cards, but still thicker and sturdier than SD. I haven't kept up with prices, but has CFExpress brought prices down? Back when I was buying XQDs, Lexar had exited the market and it was Sony or nothing. I had a 64gb and I think a 120gb, and I want to say the latter was maybe $200, give or take.
I'm glad that Nikon has gone all-in on CFExpress on the higher end cameras, and that they've released firmware updates for some of the older XQD cameras to let them use CFExpress.
Microdrive? Are you talking about the old PCMCIA cards?You shoulda seen what a 1GB microdrive used to cost...
Nice to have prices down, though memory cards are very much a "buy what you need when you need" sort of item IMHO.
Nikon is using CFExpress Type B cards, which are actually the more common and popular ones; Sony is using CFExpress Type A, which in their Tough line are so far available only in two capacities (80 GB and 160 GB) and definitely not inexpensive..... I winced a little when placing the order today at B&H for a new 160 GB one.
Somewhere around here I've still got a bunch of Compact Flash (CF) cards, which of course now do me no good since I no longer have any cameras which use them.
For years I have used memory card readers, never have used a slot in any Mac that I've owned or any printer (some printers used to come with them, too, and maybe still do). I make it a point to immediately remove a card from the card reader after I've transferred the files to my computer and then set the card over on the table near the camera if I don't want to take time just then to put the card back in and format it so that it'll be ready for the next use. Before putting the camera away in the cabinet I always insert the memory card(s) and format.
No, these were smaller -- IBM did a CompactFlash II sized hard drive back in the ~2000 timeframe that was a good alternative to the flash-memory options of the time, though they weren't cheap. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
As someone who went on a bit of a bender a few years ago of grabbing up early high end Digitals-including early Nikons as well as F mount Kodaks and Fujis-I bought Microdrives of course well after the fact. Since many old 32 bit cameras can only address 3.1gb of storage, the 1-2gb cards are sort of prized.
In any case, I was excited to get my first 1gb IBM Microdrive...only to find it dead. I've since found a couple of 2gb Toshiba ones that worked, although quickly realized that Microdrives are honestly best left as an interesting part of camera history and when it comes to actually using these old cameras a properly sized CF card is a better choice. I know at the time they certainly were appealing and a good option considering the cost of solid state storage.
I have a Kodak DCS 760 that actually has two PCMCIA slots in it and I think was designed to take PCMCIA hard drives. Fortunately it will work fine with a PCMCIA-CF adapter(and IIRC such adapters are passive as CF was basically built on the PCMCIA standard).
As an additional little side note, it's hard today to imagine a camera big enough to hold two PCMCIA cards. Like a lot of the Kodaks, the 760 is a Nikon F5-still branded as such and with features like the removable prism-with Kodak digital guts grafted onto the bottom of it. It's not a small camera, but it's also one of the few(maybe the only?) Nikon 1.3x bodies.
Amazing. These days things are much smaller and better! My apple watch has 16GB in its own case!
Indeed, it is frankly quite amazing how far we've come in four and a half decades.
In the "darn kids get off my lawn" category...
Microsoft MS DOS 3.3 couldn't handle a hard disk partition larger than 32 megabytes. The 40MB hard drives of the time had to be partitioned into two partitions, a C: drive and a D: drive.